Update to “Dominant Assurance Contract Platform”
Update #2: Platform Launched
This is an update to The Economics of the Asteroid Deflection Problem (Dominant Assurance Contracts)
How the fundraiser went
TL;DR I got $2172.67 dollars even though I only asked for $629.
My prediction of how the fundraiser would go
I expected that I would get ~1000 views on my website, of which 1% would decide to fund me, with an average donation of $90. . I expected that I would get a large initial sum of money and then it would slowly crawl upwards, until getting funded in the last few minutes.
Manifold markets seemed more pessimistic than me (see how on the 28th August there was only a 26% chance I’d raise more than $829) so I lowered the price to $629. This turned out to be unnecessary.
How the fundraiser actually went
After initially posting on Lesswrong, the conversion rate of people visiting https://dac.mowzer.co.za to funding my project was 20%. This was much higher than I expected.
On 2 September, Alex Tabarrok posted my project on marginalrevolution.com (Thanks!). After which the number of visits skyrocketed. The conversion rate lowered to 4%, but this was still higher than the 1% I expected, especially since people kept donating to the project even after it was funded.
After the goal was reached
After the the goal was reached on 2 September, people kept donating! I was not expecting this. I’m really grateful to everyone who donated.
In the end, I got 1300 visits, most from when it was posted on marginal revolution.
What I am going to do
I asked for $639 to work for a month, but since I got more than triple this I’m going to work for 3 months (up to 15 December)!
What I need
I need a name
I’m running a contest on manifold.markets to name my platform. I will PayPal $25 to the person who suggests the winning name
I need producers of public goods
If you are interested in using my platform get funding for something you want to create please fill out this google form.
Thanks for the detailed update! Since you didn’t mention it, I counted that there were 57 backers, which places the average donation at $38.1. The lowest amount donated was $5, and the highest is $100. 5 people gave $5 and 6 people gave $100. The most common amount given is $20, by 12 people.